Blog The futile search for 2009's most-returned records

Between practicing for its big death-rattle, the music industry is always eager to tell us which $17 "deals" people are still falling for down at the local Sam Goody. Still, in the wake of gift season, I can't help but notice there's no Billboard chart tracking which albums people bring back for store credit, or sell off to record shops' used bins. The used selections at local independent stores like Mad City Music Exchange (600 Williamson St., 608-251-8558), The Exclusive Company (508 State St., 608-255-2433), and Strictly Discs (1900 Monroe St., 608-259-1991)—as well as the music sections of chains like Pre-Played and Half Price Books—do just as much as new releases to keep browsing fun and surprise the curious listener. And yet the market data that's out there will never help you find out that, say, Frugal Muse on the North Side (1193 N. Sherman Ave., 608-242-0000) holds a world record for most Dan Fogelberg LPs in one place. Clearly, someone in the industry needs to get on tracking this: It's a part of our musical conversation, yet very hard to suss out. As I spoke to local record-store folks, I simply could not get close to a straight answer for this question: What were the most-ditched records of 2009?

Dave Zero of Mad City was the only person I talked to who bothered to single out an actual title: "The Flaming Lips are weird again, so we've seen more than a few of Embryonic coming back. They seem to be weirding out everyone who has not heard anything before The Soft Bulletin." Strictly Discs owner Ron Roloff rather astutely told me, in so many words, that I was barking up the wrong tree by asking small record stores about this: "It's not K-Mart, Walmart, and all that other kind of stuff where people are just lining up like crazy" to return CDs the day after Christmas, he said, adding that people who shop at his store tend to come in knowing what they want.

Still, it's clear that we can at least expect the year's biggest seller to come back in dozens of lightly scratched cases. Aaron Miller, who works at The Exclusive Co., couldn't think of a specific album people have been selling back a lot, but said, "I'm sure people wanted to return all the Susan Boyle they were getting." In an exception to his picture of the informed, tasteful Strictly Discs customer, Roloff told me he sold the middle-aged Scottish vocal sensation's album I Dreamed A Dream to about 70 people, "35 that were covering their face when they bought it."

Add this to Miller's observation that he's seeing a lot of Paul Blart: Mall Cop DVDs, and it's clear that the big guys and gals fall hardest. "By far the biggest winner for the used bins [at Madcity] have been Beatles CDs," says Dave Zero. "The smart folks started bringing them in in the summer to get ready for the remasters. We had to stop buying them because we have about three of each title in back stock." On the punk and metal tip, Ear Wax owner Rob Cleveland doesn't do too much business in used CDs, but says he saw "three or four of those new Metallica CDs [2008's Death Magnetic] lined up" at the West Side location of Half Price Books (626 S. Whitney Way, 608-273-1140).

After talking with Half Price assistant manager Jill Carlson, I sense the real answer is that used buys don't really tell you which music people hate now, but what hasn't aged well. "A lot of record returns are people who have big record collections," said Carlson, summing up her store's music selection as heavy on "run-of-the-mill classic rock," John Denver, Barbara Streisand, and Carpenters dumped off by retiring baby boomers. So even if people are itching to get rid of a certain '09 release in particular, it may have to stew in dusty boxes for a decade or two before the masses cash in on their contempt.